The action amounted to nothing more than ''tweaking prices six weeks before the election,'' Dick Cheney said, noting that the vice president proposed the drawdown just before the Clinton administration's announcement Friday.

But Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said the president was motivated by the potential heating oil shortages this winter - not high prices and the political problem they might cause Gore's White House bid.

On ''Fox News Sunday,'' Cheney said he doubts whether the nation's hard-pressed refineries could quickly convert into heating oil the 30 million barrels Clinton ordered released in the next month.

''If your refineries are already operating at 96-97 percent of capacity, even if you give them more crude, they're not likely to be able to produce a significant increase in heating oil,'' he said.

Yet, ''because it's six weeks before the election and they're worried about prices, all of a sudden Al Gore is for releasing oil ... to manipulate prices,'' Cheney said. ''It's hard not to view it in a political context.''

Richardson, on NBC's ''Meet the Press,'' denied again, as Clinton did Saturday, that the release was a political favor for Gore.

''We are preparing for potential disruptions, potential shortages,'' Richardson said. ''The president acted because stocks were so low.''

Shown videotapes in which Gore and Clinton suggested the release would bring prices in line, Richardson said: ''All of this is consistent. We're concerned about tightness in the market.''

He said the booming U.S. economy has increased demand for oil products by 14 percent. ''But home heating oil stocks, extremely low,'' Richardson said. ''We're worried about a winter ... where a lot of moderate-income people, poor people, couldn't pay for home heating oil.''

The 590-million-barrel Strategic Oil Reserve was set up as insurance against interruption of oil supplies after the 1973 Arab oil embargo caused near-unprecedented shortages at the gasoline pump. Except for two practice drawdowns, its only previous use was during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Cheney, a former defense secretary who joined the oil technology company Halliburton after his Pentagon duty, appeared on three Sunday news shows to criticize Clinton's decision.

He said the nation lacks an energy policy, adding that strict environmental and other rules make exploration more difficult and costly.

''There is no policy there in place,'' he said on ABC's ''This Week.''

Cheney said domestic production is lower than any time since 1954, and that because imports have risen 34 percent in the past few years, the United States now relies on foreign countries for more than half its oil.

''Our demand continues to grow as our economy grows, and it's all being satisfied as the result of imports,'' Cheney said.

The answer, he said, is to open to production such areas as the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve near the Prudhoe Bay oil fields. ''It could be easily developed,'' Cheney said, ''and Bill Clinton and Al Gore have blocked it every single time.''

The administration opposes development of an oil field on the reserve for environmental reasons, which Cheney said can be addressed with new technology.

Mark Fabiani, the Gore campaign's deputy manager, said both Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush and Cheney are incensed about the release because of their ties to the oil industry.

''Al Gore is standing up for families. It's the wintertime coming up, people need to heat homes, and Al Gore's going to make sure that they're able to do that,'' Fabiani said on CNN's ''Late Edition.''

Sen. Tom Harkin contended that Bush and Cheney want to ''drill more wells and drill it in our pristine national wildlife refuges.''

''That is no energy policy; that's a pollution policy,'' Harkin, D-Iowa, said on Fox.

The latest report on the reserve by Energy Department experts indicates that even opening it would not prove a quick fix to the nation's energy problems. The experts estimate the start-up time for production would be seven to 12 years.